Technical Field
The present disclosure generally relates to electronic commerce and, more particularly, relates to methods and systems for delegating spending authority from one device to another device.
Related Art
Credit cards, debit cards, and gift cards are well known. Such cards can be used to make purchases, such as at brick-and-mortar stores. Although such cards are very popular now, they are being replaced, at least in some instances, with mobile devices. For example, mobile devices such as smart telephones, tablet computers, and the like are being used in place of credit cards to make purchases.
A mobile device can contain information such as that stored on the magnetic strip of a credit card. The mobile device can be swiped or scanned, such as by imaging the screen of the mobile device or by wirelessly communicating with the wireless device via WiFi, Bluetooth, or near field communications (NFC). For example, the mobile device can be secured to a merchant's device reader to cause scanning of the mobile device during the checkout process.
Electronic tokens can similarly be used to make purchases. A hardware token is a dedicated device that can be used like the mobile device to make purchases. Thus, the hardware token can be secured to the merchant's device reader to cause scanning of the hardware token during the checkout process. Hardware tokens are typically small and can generally be attached to a key ring.
Software tokens are similar to hardware tokens, except that software tokens are stored in a non-dedicated device, such as a mobile device. Thus, a software token can be transferred to a user's smart telephone to enable the user's smart telephone to make purchases.
Although contemporary methods for making such purchases have proven generally satisfactory, such contemporary methods exhibit characteristics that generally detract from their overall utility and accuracy.